


The Van Helsing Line

by Beserk



Series: Little Sun [9]
Category: Dracula & Related Fandoms, Dracula (TV 2020), Dracula - Bram Stoker
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:21:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22530031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beserk/pseuds/Beserk
Summary: Some lines are destined to crash with death.
Relationships: Dracula/Jonathan Harker
Series: Little Sun [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1598731
Comments: 18
Kudos: 340





	1. Chapter 1

When Abraham had been a child, he'd been taken by his father on a trip to Holland to see his father's family, and had met his father's aunt. The thing that had surprised Abe most about this great-aunt had not been the fact that she'd been a nun (that had been odd, for sure), or the fact that she certainly did not act like a nun. No, the oddest thing about her had come when his father had gone to the bathroom for a few moments, leaving Abe alone with the old woman, and she had patted his head and said, "Did your father tell you about vampires, child?"

Right. Well. That had happened.

"Um," Abe had replied. Eloquent, sure, but what was he supposed to say?

"I'll take that as no," Agatha had sighed, patting Abe's head condescendingly. "Ah, shame. Well, listen carefully boy, yes?"

"Sure," Abe had squeezed, rather frightened.

Agatha had leaned over, so their faces were inches from another, and she'd said softly, "I've met vampires throughout my life, and other creatures as well. And you will, as well. I think I've accidently cursed our family."

She'd trailed off, eyes moving away from Abe to look out the window. And Abe had only been ten at the time, but even he could see the sadness in the old woman's eyes. He hadn't realized it at the time- he'd been too young for _that_ \- but the sadness in Agatha's eyes had been the sadness of a human realizing their mortality.

"Well, anyways, get ready for that when you grow up," Agatha had said briskly as Abe's father had come back into the room. She'd looked up at Abe's father and added, "Your own father hasn't encountered any vampire."

"Auntie," Abe's father had come over and pulled Abraham away from Agatha. "I see you're telling my son fairytales."

"Don't be ridiculous," Agatha had snorted. "Just because you've had a sweet and charmed life doesn't mean your son will as well."

Abe's father had snorted, kissed Agatha's head and said his goodbyes, promising to return with Abe the next day.

He hadn't kept that promise, though. Because that night, after Abe had been put to bed, he'd woken up to the sound of gasping and slurping. Frowning at the odd sound, Abe had sat up in bed, rubbing his eyes and made his way out of the hotel bedroom to the adjacent one, his father's bedroom.

Now. Abe was ten years old at the time. And he'd still been half-asleep, so in years to come he was never quite sure how much of what he saw had been real and how much had been a dream. But this is what he remembered, years later: His father had been lying in bed, his body twitching slightly. And there had been a figure above him, the figure of a man dressed in black, who'd been leaning down, his lips latched to Abe's father's throat.

And Abe could see a trial of blood running down to the white sheets.

He's not entirely sure how long he'd stood there, before the figure had stiffened and looked up. His lips had been red from blood and he'd grinned.

"Hello there, little one," The figure had purred. "And aren't you an adorable child?"

He might have fainted, or he might had allowed the creature to pick him up and take him back to his bed. He's not sure, but the next thing to happen that he was sure of is that he'd woken up for a second time, made his way to his father's bedroom, saw the body spread on the bed, and had started screaming.

"I told you," Agatha had said to him at his father's funeral in New York, a few days later. "What are you going to do now?"

"What about you?" Abe had asked. "Aren't you going to do anything?"

"I'm afraid I'm too old to do anything," Agatha had pointed at her wheelchair.

"And I'm too young," Abe had told her, watching his mother cry over the grave, holding his baby sister Zoe.

"But you won't be too young forever," Agatha reminded him. "And the creature will remain around forever, waiting for you to be strong enough to fight him."

Agatha had died three weeks after Abe's father had, while still in New York. She was supposed to fly back to Holland and her nunnery that day, but when Abe's mother had asked Abe to go get Agatha, he'd found her cold and dead on the bed.

Heart attack, the doctors had said later. It had made sense, of course. She'd been an old woman.

"I'm sorry, sweetheart," Abe's mother had whispered, at yet another funeral. "You're too young to lose so many people."

Too young. He was too young for so much.

That hadn't lasted, of course. Little kids grew up. But by the time he did that, he was no longer sure what had been real and what had been inserted into his mind by Agatha's odd whispers.

So, he didn’t spend his time as Agatha would have liked, learning about vampires or…trying to fight them.

But he still sometimes had a hard time falling asleep, looking out the window and waiting for the dark creature to come for him.


	2. Chapter 2

"Let's go to New York," Jonathan had said. Asked? Announced? It was something in between those three.

But since that was the first time Jonathan had really seemed to care where they were going (other than that one time they'd returned to London and Jonathan had been entirely unpleased), Dracula had agreed without a fight.

And boy, was he glad he did. New York was magnificently disgusting, really. You couldn't take a few steps before seeing druggies strewn here and there. You didn't even have to be careful who you killed; the police didn't seem to care. Drinking from druggies was somewhat of a problem, since it got Dracula rather addicted to drugs, which Jonathan was _not_ fond of.

"Stop drinking from those people," Jonathan had finally commanded. Really, how was Dracula supposed to say no to those heart-stopping blue eyes?

So that was how he found himself in NYU, looking for another student to drink from. He'd spent the last few days feeding from an Economics professor, a Biology Bachelor and a Chemistry assistant-teacher.

Jonathan, of course, had only drank from law professors. Creativity in victims had never been one of his sweetheart's strong-suits. But keeping up-to-date with the law made him happy, so who was Dracula to try and make a change?

Dracula leaned back in his chair, looking around the university library, at the students walking back and forth. Young people were so beautiful, and they looked so good when they were dying at his hands.

There was a group of students sitting a few tables away from him, studying together for a test. Dracula smirked and cupped his chin in his hand, flicking his eyes from one student to the next. So. Which one should he go for? The blond, blue eyed girl, or the redheaded one? Or maybe the boy at the head of the table, arms outstretched and head lying on them. He had brown hair and eyes, a chiseled, sharp chin and narrow nose.

He was stunning, a beautiful little boy. Dracula smirked and sat straighter. He was going to enjoy kill this boy.

Dracula waited while the study session went on. And on, and on. Dracula had sat down at around eight in the evening, but it was only at twelve thirty that the attractive boy yawned.

"I think Abe's had enough," One of the other students said with a grin.

"We should call it a night," The boy-Abe-mumbled and stood up, grabbing all of his books and shoving them in a back. "See you all tomorrow?"

Finally.

Dracula followed the boy out of the library, carefully staying in the dark as the boy went out into the streets. He waited until the boy made his way into a dark and secluded alley.

Dracula grabbed the boy's shoulder and threw him on the ground. The boy gasped in surprised shock as he fell onto the ground. But as Dracula loomed over him, the boy's eyes widened, and it wasn’t with fear. It was in recognition.

"You," The boy whispered in wonder, as if he'd been waiting his entire life to meet Dracula. "You're _real_. You're alive."

Dracula frowned and raised an eyebrow, "No. Not exactly."

The boy kept on staring at him, and then said, "You killed my dad."

"Very possible," Dracula replied as he leaned down. "But I've killed so many people, I can't be expected to remember them all."

"I saw you kill my dad," The boy kept speaking as Dracula exposed his fangs. "Why didn't you kill me as well?"

Dracula shrugged, not caring much, and then ducked in to drink.

The first memory that came rushing into his mind was the boy as a true child, looking on as Dracula (it was slightly odd to see himself from the eyes of a child) drank from his father. And-yes, he did remember that night- finally finding Agatha Van Helsing, who had tried to kill him and Jonathan quite a few times during the first world war, drinking from her nephew (humans were quite affected by killing their family members) and finding the little boy.

He hadn't killed the boy, and he'd been rather glad of it over the next few weeks, watching Agatha hold the crying child and knowing that she knew that it had been him and no one else who killed her nephew. He hadn't even had to kill her; three weeks of grief had been enough to stop her poor old heart.

"Ah, a Van Helsing, then," Dracula grinned, licking at the throat. He pushed the boy's hair out of his forehead and stood up. He could not _wait_ to tell Jonathan about this.

*

"Don't go looking for him again," Was Jonathan's automatic response when Dracula had told him about Abraham Van Helsing.

"Why not?" Dracula demanded as he began unbuttoning his shirt. He watched Jonathan carefully close the drapes and start walking around the room, putting the things that Dracula had thrown around back in place. "You liked Agatha!"

"I thought she was a very impressive woman, yes," Jonathan shoved a shirt into the laundry basket and then glared at Dracula. "It was three centimeters from the basket. You couldn't just put the fucking shirt in the fucking basket?"

"Language, sweetness."

Drinking from Americans was terrible for Jonathan's vocabulary. So much swearing. These Americans…

Jonathan responded by throwing the entire basket of laundry onto Dracula's head.

"You killed Agatha's nephew, leave his boy alone," Jonathan said as Dracula clawed his way out of the laundry-grave his lover had subjected him to. "You don't have to kill everyone in that family."

"I found Agatha to be a wonderfully interesting woman, I wonder if her line is the same," Dracula hummed. "The nephew…no, he hadn't been anything special."

"They're not her progeny," Jonathan replied, as smart as normal. "Why do you expect to find anything of her in them?"

"Come here," Dracula replied, motioning Jonathan over. Jonathan sighed deeply but obliged, coming to stand next to Dracula and then allowing himself to be settle on Dracula's lap. "It was so fun, when she was running after us."

"Hmm," Jonathan allowed their hands to tangle together, his thumb caressing Dracula's wrist. "Is that why you let her live? Because she was fun?"

"I thought I let her live because you begged me to," Dracula replied. "Wasn't it your ten-year anniversary gift?"

The look Jonathan gave him was deadly.

"Fifteen-year?"

"We're not married."

That was an old argument, and Dracula decided that since Jonathan was already mad at him because of the Van Helsing issue, it would probably be best to move on from that.

"Leave Van Helsing alone, all right?" Jonathan asked with a soft voice, and Dracula groaned inwardly, because he knew he wouldn’t be able to say no to that beautiful voice.

"All right, darling," Dracula replied, throwing Jonathan down on the bed. "But you better make it up to me."


	3. Chapter 3

Abe took a deep breath, closing his eyes for a moment. He curled his fingers around the axe he found in the student dorms and looked at the doorknob in front of him. He'd followed the vampire to this apartment a few days ago, and watched from the darkness as he shoved another man (maybe another vampire, he didn't know) into a seat and loomed over him. The other man hadn't seemed scared, more like exasperated as he curled his hands around the vampire and allowed himself to be kissed. Abe had turned away, at the exact moment when the man had begun engaging with the kiss as well. That was really not the sort of thing he was interested in seeing.

So now here he was, about to walk into the apartment to kill the vampire who'd killed his father. It was the middle of the day, and according to stories vampires slept during the day.

He really should have gotten more information out of Agatha before she'd died.

"You can do this," Abe whispered to himself, and moved to open the door-

But then the door opened and the blue-eyed man appeared.

"No, you can't," The man whispered back.

Abe swallowed, staring at the man. He didn't look like a monster to Abe, not like the creature who'd loomed over him, drinking his blood. He looked…kind, and young. He looked like he could have been an assistant teacher at Abe's university.

He knew that he should turn and room, or try to kill the man in front of him, like he was planning on killing his father's killer. But he was finding it impossible to see this man as anything but-well, a man.

"Let me pass," Abraham said, tightening his hold on the axe. "You're not like him-"

"I am."

"But it's the middle of the day!"

"In the middle of winter, there's no sun outside," The man replied. "I can spend as much time as I want outside the apartment. Not that I'm going to follow you. I won't. No one will. So you should leave now, Abraham."

Abe swallowed, "How do you know my name?"

"I've had interactions with your aunt," The man told him, and then stepped forward out of the apartment, closing the door behind him. The sound of the banging door made Abraham jump and he finally took a step backwards.

"Who are you?" Abe demanded.

"Jonathan Harker."

That meant nothing to Abraham, but the man didn't give any more information. Jonathan Harker. That was all the man was.

"He killed my father," Abe said, though he knew the man knew. The apology in his eyes made that clear.

"Dracula has killed many, many people, as have I."

"Then…then let me kill him."

"You won't be able to."

"So…so you kill him?"

He hadn't planned to turn that sentence into a question. But Jonathan could kill the creature, couldn't he? Agatha had said that their family was cursed, but maybe a cursed creature could save them from it.

But Jonathan shook his head, "No. I can't kill Dracula."

"Why not?" Abraham demanded.

Jonathan sighed deeply and grabbed Abraham's axe, prying it out of his hold.

"Are you not strong enough?"

"No, I'm not," Jonathan replied. "But I could…he's sleeping…"

Abraham held his breath in hope, but the man sighed and threw the axe to the ground.

"But I can't kill him, Abraham."

The hope died before it really had the chance to live.

"Why?" Abe whispered. "He's a monster-"

"He is. And so am I."

"So, you're just going to…to let him continue? Let you both continue killing people?" Abraham growled. The strange confusion that had been enveloping him suddenly seemed to lift, and he moved into action, rushing to grab the axe.

Jonathan didn't move, just kept on looking at him as Abe raised the axe to hit him, hard. But as the axe came down, Jonathan moves his hand, and suddenly Abe felt an explosion of pain go through his gut. He gasped, falling forward into Jonathan's waiting arms, and looked up to see Jonathan carefully laying him down on the ground.

"I'm sorry, but I have to let him continue," Jonathan whispered. "He's all I have now."

Abe just managed to see his beating heart in the monster's hand before he died.

*

Jonathan was always beautiful to Dracula. He was beautiful when he was lying in the ditches, covered in mud. He was beautiful when he'd just woken up, his hair sticking out from all sides. He'd been beautiful when Dracula had been drinking from him, depleting his life force. He'd been a beautiful corpse, for those few minutes.

Jonathan was always beautiful to Dracula, but he was the most beautiful, stunningly, breathtakingly (if Dracula had the ability to breath, of course) beautiful, when he was covered in blood. When the crimson liquid trickled down his face next to his blackened eyes, when he looked like the monster that Dracula had made out of his beloved bride.

"Sweetheart," Dracula came up to Jonathan. He was on his knees in front of the body of the Van Helsing boy, holding his heart in his hand. Jonathan's white nightshirt was drenched in blood, which made it heavy enough to start drooping down Jonathan's shoulder.

Dracula leaned down behind Jonathan and pulled the other vampire against his chest.

"I thought we said we were leaving the Van Helsings' alone, hmm, love?" Dracula purred into Jonathan's ear before nibbling it.

"He came here," Jonathan whispered in reply. "I didn't go looking for him."

"Hmm, and why was he here?"

"To kill you."

"Ah. Of course," Dracula smirked. "For revenge?"

Jonathan sighed deeply and turned in Dracula's hold to look at him. Dracula blinked at the intense glare.

"For revenge," Jonathan said softly. And there was something in his look that made Dracula think he was perhaps not speaking of the Van Helsing boy anymore.

"But here he is, lying dead on the ground instead of running for his life. You couldn't scare him off, darling?" Dracula asked quietly.

"I probably could have. But he could have come back," Jonathan placed his bloody hand in front of Dracula and motioned to it with his hand.

Taking the hint, Dracula leaned in to take two fingers into his mouth, sucking hard before slipping the fingers out of his lover's mouth. They were just as wet as before, but now shiny with Dracula's spit instead of blood.

"And you didn't want that to happen, did you?" Dracula asked, licking at another bloody finger.

"No, I didn’t," Jonathan whispered. "I didn't want you to be in danger, even from a human who probably couldn't do anything to you."

"Yes, life would be rather difficult for you if you were to be without me, wouldn’t it?"

"That's not why," Jonathan said, sharp and accusatory.

Raising an eyebrow, Dracula looked up, "No? Why, then?"

"Because," Jonathan pushed Dracula to the ground and crawled over him, bloody hands leaving prints on Dracula's shirt. "I love you."

"Ah," Dracula blinked. "Is that why he didn't get his revenge?"

"Yes," Jonathan mumbled. "That's why I didn't get my revenge."


	4. Chapter 4

He should have thought of this before, really. He was a bit ashamed in himself that he hadn't. Of all the backdrops he'd seen Jonathan stand against throughout the past hundreds of years, fire had never been one of them. And he'd positioned Jonathan against many backdrops, placing him certain situations really just to see him there. Like that time he took Jonathan back out to sea and watched him look out onto the water, eyes wide and searching, or the time he somehow convinced Jonathan to come to a nightclub with him. Probably mostly because he hadn't been interested (at _all_ ), which had been very amusing to Dracula. The red colours of the club and the pounding music framing the moment as Dracula pulled Jonathan towards him and kissed him, hard, had been a memory for the ages.

He'd seen Jonathan laying on silk, covered in mud and raising from the ground, sitting on top of a tree looking down, jumping down from a tall building, gazing up at him while drinking from duchesses and kings, and on and on and on.

But fire. He doesn’t think he'd ever seen Jonathan illuminated by fire. And what a shame that is, he realized now, as he watched the soft orange light caressing Jonathan's skin, the way the play of shadow and light brings out his blue eyes. Dracula sometimes wondered if he'll ever _not_ find Jonathan's eyes stunningly beautiful. The most beautiful thing in the world.

Hmm. Probably not.

Dracula carefully moved forward, watching Jonathan's silhouette stay rigid in place, and wrapped his arms around the other vampire's waist, pulling him so his back leans against Dracula's chest. He planted his chin on Jonathan's shoulder and looked past him at the bonfire he had started.

"I hate the smell of burning human flesh," Dracula said. "Couldn't you have found a different way to dispose of the body?"

"Shut up," Jonathan promptly responded. There was a slight waver in his voice, something that no one but Dracula would have been able to detect. But he _was_ Dracula, so he could.

Jonathan stiffened when Dracula moved the collar of his shirt to expose his white skin before kissing the pulse point (the completely silent pulse point, there is no blood there), but he didn't push him away, so Dracula kissed him again, harsher, allowing his fangs to come out and scrape Jonathan's skin.

"Stop it," _Now_ Jonathan pushed him away, but only far enough to force Dracula's fangs off of his skin.

Dracula allowed that distance, but tightened his hold on Jonathan's waist, almost warningly, to make sure Jonathan knew he was not going to let him slip away from him. Not now, not ever.

"My beautiful Jonathan," Dracula whispered, tilting Jonathan's neck so he could look him in the eye. "Thank you."

"For what? It's not like Abraham could have done anything to you," Jonathan said, sounding so little and confused. He looked so young, suddenly, as young as he had been when Dracula had first found him. It made Dracula want to hold him close forever, protect him from the harshness of life.

Oh, if only he could.

"That's not why, sweetheart," Dracula placed his forehead against Jonathan's. Immediately, a hand came up to curl around the back of his neck, Jonathan pulling him closer.

"Why, then?"

Smiling softly, Dracula said, "I think you know why."

Jonathan closed his eyes, "Right."

"You could have left, I think, a long time ago."

"No, I really couldn’t have."

"No?"

"You know I couldn't have, you know you're all I have now," Jonathan wrapped both arms around Dracula, leaning his forehead against Dracula's shoulder. "You're all I have for a long, long time."

And normally, Dracula would just smirk and move on from that, confident in the fact that he had Jonathan, would always have him. But something had changed, and he can't let it go without at least saying something about it.

"I love you too, Johnny," He whispered. "But you already knew that."

He wasn't sure what reaction he expected, but Jonathan raising his head and kissing him hard enough to bruise (well, if he bruised) was certainly not it.

Not that he was complaining. Frankly, he had nothing to complain about anymore.


End file.
